Braintree council president says he’ll work with clerk despite dispute

Wednesday

Dec 11, 2013 at 12:01 AMDec 11, 2013 at 11:04 AM

Braintree Town Council President Charles Kokoros says he won’t let a recent spat between the council and Town Clerk Joseph Powers keep him from working with the clerk.

Neal Simpson

Town council President Charles Kokoros says he won’t let a recent spat between the council and Town Clerk Joseph Powers keep him from working with the clerk.

Relations between Powers and the nine-member council have grown strained in the last week after an audit of travel expenses in the clerk’s office prompted Powers to fire back with an state Open Meeting Law complaint against the council. At a meeting Monday night, called to consider the clerk’s complaint, the council released a year-old written record of a closed-door meeting during which councilors discussed a hostile-workplace complaint against Powers.

The clerk has declined to say whether he plans to bring his complaint against the council to the state attorney general’s office, but Kokoros said he considers the matter closed.

“The clerk has a job to do and I have a job to do, and I don’t think that this matter has any bearing on our continued performance of both of our oaths,” he said.

Powers did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

A longtime town official who ran unsuccessfully for mayor in 2007, Powers had limited support among the councilors even before he filed a complaint against them last week. Three of seven councilors voted against reappointing him in July 2012, some of them citing concerns about personnel issues in his office.

Meeting minutes made public Monday show that councilors met behind closed doors six months later to discuss hostile-workplace complaints that two employees, including Powers, filed against each other. The town’s human resources director determined that there had not been a violation of labor laws or town policy and that no discipline was warranted.

The release of the minutes came amid a dispute between the clerk and the council stemming from an audit of all conference and travel spending by town councilors and departments that fall under the council budget, including the office of the town clerk. Based on the audit, several councilors drafted a policy that would require councilors and council employees to use a standardized form to seek approval before attending a conference or class.

The council was prepared to consider the proposal Dec. 3 when Powers filed a complaint with the council accusing it of violating the state Open Meeting Law by posting incomplete information before discussing the clerk’s travel expenses.

In his complaint, Powers alleges that the violations occurred at a Nov. 19 session of the council’s ways and means committee and a Nov. 25 meeting of the council’s ordinance and rules committee. In both cases, he said, notices posted for the meetings said councilors would be discussing a “financial audit (of) meeting expenses” but neglected to say that they also planned to discuss potential policies for the expenses.

Although the policy discussion was delayed, the council wound up approving a policy at its meeting Monday night.

Powers had no comment on the policy after the vote.

The council said it had not violated the Open Meeting Law back in November. The town’s lawyer is now drafting a formal response to Powers’ complaint.

Powers’ three-year term as clerk ends in 2015.

Neal Simpson may be reached at nesimpson@ledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @NSimpson_Ledger.